


All the King's Men

by Souless_Robot



Series: Yugioh Au-gust [2]
Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! GX
Genre: AU-gust 2020, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, M/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Unrequited Love, rageshipping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-04
Updated: 2020-08-04
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:01:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25702504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Souless_Robot/pseuds/Souless_Robot
Summary: He’s wrong Chazz realizes later. One-sided sparks or soulmates aren’t a thing. At least Chazz had never heard of them. And so what if the words didn’t match Chazz knew his soul words were a mistake.  Maybe Jaden was his soulmate and the idiot was too dense to notice? It’s not like it was impossible; stranger things had happened. There were even rumors that Yugi Mutou was his own soulmate and if that was possible, well Jaden seemed like he could be kind of thick-headed.Chazz would just stay close and watch. If Jaden met his soulmate well that was that, but if not well maybe Chazz could get a peek at his soul words, and then he would know for certain.Or Chazz is the Supreme King's soulmate but not Jaden's.
Relationships: Haou | Supreme King/Manjoume Jun | Chazz Princeton, Johan Andersen | Jesse Anderson/Yuuki Juudai | Jaden Yuki, Manjoume Jun | Chazz Princeton/Yuuki Juudai | Jaden Yuki
Series: Yugioh Au-gust [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1862191
Comments: 9
Kudos: 48
Collections: AUgust 2020





	All the King's Men

**Author's Note:**

> Another one-shot for AU-gust! This one's for soulmate aus if you couldn't tell. I've recently been obsessed with Chazz/Haou as a rare pair with a lot of potential and then what do you know my muses gave me this angsty one-shot. I might come back and play with this idea a little bit more after Au-gust is all over who knows! In the meantime, kudos, comments, and critiques are all welcome! 
> 
> Hope you enjoy it.

Chazz’s soul mark has never made his life easy. There, in curly cursive on the edge of his collar bone, are his words:  _ Is that any way to speak to a King? _

His family is so pleased when his words appear. He’s five and he doesn’t understand when his mother hugs him -the first and last hug he can remember from her- and tells him that his soulmate will be great. That Chazz must do everything he can to find them. 

Love is not part of the conversation. The galas start soon after that. The next five years are nothing but introductions and parties. Chazz can’t remember how many dignitaries and royals he’s met. The Princetons are old money and well respected after all. 

His mother gets more distant and her eyes get colder after every party. Chazz shivers and retreats further into himself. He wishes he could disappear. 

“Why can’t you say the right words?” She hisses after one particularly bad gala with the British Royals. As usual, there was no spark between Chazz and any of the heirs. Chazz doesn’t answer he can’t. He doesn’t know his words, no one knows them but his soulmate and his soulmate is nowhere to be found. 

Chazz decides his words must be a mistake. He’s tired, so tired of the sliver of hope that perks up every time he says hello to so and so’s distant cousin Prince Abdul from Oman. It always ends the same way, disappointment. 

His older brothers are jealous and Chazz doesn’t understand why. Slade has a soulmate, he’s seen her and she’s beautiful. Chazz only sees his eldest brother smile when he’s with her. Jagger hasn’t found his soulmate yet but he’s pursuing law and the apple of their Father’s eye. Still, Chazz sees the way they stare at him at the parties. He hears them whisper, they don’t try to hide it. They’re jealous of his words. 

His words are a mistake. He tries to tell them that; they laugh and tell him he’s too stupid to know how good he has it. Chazz doesn’t understand. If he’s so lucky then why is he so alone? 

He tries to tell his mother he thinks his words are wrong exactly once. He still remembers the fury in her eyes as she slaps him hard, he still has a faint scar from where her heavy garnet ring hit his cheekbone. 

“Don’t you dare say that you ungrateful stupid child! Listen whelp, you only have one job to raise the prestige of this family, of the Princetons. It’s the reason you were born. If you can’t even do that you’re useless to me!” His mother takes another shaky drink of her liquor, “Never say those words again.” 

That’s the day Chazz realizes he doesn’t belong to his soulmate he belongs to his family. It’s not a lesson he will forget. 

* * *

When Chazz is eleven he finds duel monsters and throws himself fully into the games and tournaments. The galas slow down and finally stop. It seems his mother has given up on the prospect, has given up on him. Chazz would never say it aloud but he’s glad. Maybe his mother finally realized what he’s known for years: his words are a mistake. 

Chazz starts winning tournaments. They say he’s the youngest champion ever. The trophies make him smile but they have nothing on the fact that his brothers start coming to watch him duel. They don’t have jealousy in their eyes instead it's interest. 

His brothers pull him aside after the junior national championship. 

“It’s time you start carrying your end of the family business,” Slade says on the drive home. 

“The family business?” Chazz asks as his hands tighten around the armrests. 

Slade rolls his eyes, “World domination. The Princeton Group will upset Kaiba Corp and then we’ll have it all. It’s a three-pronged approach. Try to keep up little brother. One,” His brother flips a finger up, “Business. I have that covered. I’ve been training under Uncle Shinto for years. Two,” He flips another finger, “The Courts. Jagger has that covered. And that leaves three,” Slade’s eyes narrow, they’re the same shade of dark grey as Chazz’s own, but they always seem so much more confident than his, “Duel Monsters. With these three areas covered no one will be able to stop our market domination.”

Chazz blinks. Duel Monsters and world domination? It sounds like one of the comics his classmates are always reading. Chazz can’t help but giggle. 

Slade reaches out quick as a viper and wraps his hand around Chazz’s wrist. He squeezes. It hurts. The pressure makes it feel like his bones are grinding together any tighter and it would snap. Chazz stops laughing. His eyes widen as they look into the anger on his brother’s face. He gulps as involuntary tears gather in the corners of his eyes. 

“This isn’t a laughing matter. You will do your part,” He snarls, “You will be the best. Rising to the top in Duel Monsters is your responsibility.” 

Chazz wants to say no, but he can’t ignore the pain in his wrist so he nods his head in agreement. 

“We all have to do our part for this family. Do you understand, Chazz?” Jagger asks in a disinterested voice as he flips through his phone, “As a Princeton, you were born for this reason. Do not let us down.” 

* * *

Chazz hates Jaden Yuki from the first word the idiot says to him. The words that aren’t  _ is that any way to speak to a King?  _

Instead, they are a plain ordinary introduction. 

“Oh hey, what’s up? My name’s Jaden.” 

Chazz feels an electrical current in the air snapback around him. He feels the spark but the words are wrong and Jaden gives no inclination that he feels anything beyond a general cheer and sunniness towards everything. He crushes the tiny sliver of hope that dared to raise its head. For the first time in Chazz’s life, he loses a duel. He wishes he could say it was the last. It only gets more complicated after that. 

* * *

He’s wrong Chazz realizes later. One-sided sparks or soulmates aren’t a thing. At least Chazz had never heard of them. And so what if the words didn’t match Chazz knew his soul words were a mistake. Maybe Jaden was his soulmate and the idiot was too dense to notice? It’s not like it was impossible; stranger things had happened. There were even rumors that Yugi Mutou was his own soulmate and if that was possible, well Jaden seemed like he could be kind of thick-headed.

Chazz would just stay close and watch. If Jaden met his soulmate well that was that, but if not well maybe Chazz could get a peek at his soul words, and then he would know for certain. 

* * *

Time races by after that. 

He leaves Duel Academy because of Jaden and then he returns also because of Jaden. He’s demoted to Slifer Red. He leaves his family behind him. They fight in Shadow Duels and travel to different dimensions. Somewhere in the chaos, Chazz starts seeing duel spirits. He stops thinking about his words. He just experiences everything. The pleasure of having people that care about him. He even basks in the annoying misadventures the geeks drag him into. 

Of course, all good things have to end and the beginning of the end comes in the form of Jesse Anderson. 

When Jaden meets the transfer student Chazz feels the light go out. The funny thing is Chazz hadn’t even realized he’d been holding a torch since freshman year for Jaden until the possibility was gone. It’s obvious Jaden has found his soulmate. The two of them together practically radiate rainbows. It’s impossible to miss it. They only have eyes for each other. Chazz can only watch as he’s left alone rubbing the lonely words that gracefully sweep across his collar bones.

* * *

Chazz doesn’t get a chance to mope, not when it all goes to shit after that. Viper shows up and the academy is stranded in a different dimension. Then there’s Yubel and well Jesse goes missing and somehow Chazz gets drafted into the rescue party. He’d like to say he wasn’t bitter. He’d be lying. 

Jaden is quiet, far too quiet. Chazz wishes he knew what to say. 

They traipse their way across the Dark World until they find their group at the castle -if you can call it that. Chazz wouldn’t. He’s been in real castles. If anything he considers this a slight upgrade from an abandoned shack. It certainly has enough mold to be a shack. 

There’s still no sign of Jesse, but that doesn’t stop Jaden from being an idiot and challenging the King to a duel. Chazz supposes it really was too much to ask him to stay on task and not duel even where his soulmates concerned. If Jesse were Chazz’s soulmate he wouldn’t be wasting a second in this dimension that wasn’t spent searching for him, but then again what does Chazz know about soulmates? 

While Jaden’s dueling the rest of them manage to walk right into a trap only Jim and Axel manage to escape. Chazz can’t say he likes being a prisoner. He can firmly say that he likes the chains around his wrists and ankles even less. 

Chazz doesn’t know how long they sit alone in the dungeon or why the rock wall suddenly decides to absorb them and spit them out on a platform above the courtyard. What Chazz does know is that they now have front row seats to Jaden’s duel. The duel he shouldn’t be having. 

The Mad King smiles. Chazz doesn’t like the look on him. He likes it even less when he flips over his spell card. 

The shackles around his wrists tighten. It feels like someone is trying to squeeze him through a drain pipe. His head is about to explode. His soul words burn like someone has taken poker to his chest. Then nothing, there is blissful blackness and when Chazz comes to the Mad King is staring at him in shock. The monster’s eyes narrow as he calls on his spell again. This time its Hassleberry that cries out in pain. 

The screams don’t stop and then in a storm of grey Hassleberry breaks apart. In an instant, he’s gone and only fluttering flecks of ash remain. 

He watches their friends turn to ash one by one. He’s powerless to stop it. He hears their screams as their very souls are pressed into a book, fuel to be used in a super polymerization spell for the pleasure of a mad titan. Soon he’s the only one left. 

Jaden is on his knees screaming the names of their friends. It doesn’t help. The truth hits Chazz like a bucket of icy water; they might get Jesse back, but not all of them would be leaving this dimension. 

Somewhere in the chaos of the duel Jim and Axel manage to get Chazz out of his cuffs and away from the courtyard. 

“Thought you were a goner mate,” Jim says as they don their disguises to sneak out of the castle. 

“Yeah, me too,” Chazz mutters. 

They don’t wait for Jaden. He can take care of himself as far as dueling is concerned and they won’t be doing him any favors if they all get caught. 

* * *

They don’t hear from Jaden in months. There are rumors that the Mad King has fallen and people are tentatively hopeful as they throw open their doors and go outside. Then duelists start going missing and it’s apparent one tyrant has merely replaced another. 

There’s still no sign of Jesse. 

Eventually, it’s desperation that drives them back to the castle. They’ve spent months in the countryside watching innocent people cower in absolute terror. They have no other leads and now Jaden and Jesse are both MIA. At this point, they’re stranded and they might as well do something good while they wait. 

They sneak in through the main gate. It’s as simple as walking through. The guards are obviously fools who have abandoned their post in favor of watching their monarch rip the life out of some poor duelist. 

The spectacle is in the courtyard. The same courtyard where Alexis, Atticus, and Hassleberry turned to ash. 

Chazz couldn’t take it as he watched the monster in black armor tear through his opponent's deck like a jackal. The poor man didn’t stand a chance. Chazz grit his teeth enough was enough. They’d lost too many people in this goddamned place and Chazz was through being helpless. 

“Hey, you!” Chazz yelled at the top of his lungs. Axel and Jim instantly pulled their cloaks tighter around them and tried to not draw attention to themselves. Chazz didn’t know how they could expect anything to change if they didn’t dive headfirst at the problem. He was through waiting. This new monstrous king wanted to duel. Well, Chazz Princeton would give him a duel. 

Chazz pointed his finger and did his best to look down his nose at this psychopath. He didn’t deserve any respect. “Yeah, you with the stupid spikey armor. You better tell me where Jaden Yuki is or else I’m about to come down there and duel you into the dust.” 

“Is that any way to speak to a King?”

Chazz freezes. This can’t be happening. His words burn like liquid lightning and cold golden eyes meet his own. The King’s apathetic face twists into a cruel smirk. 

The monsters around them growl and begin to circle cutting off their escape back to the gate. 

This can’t be happening. This has to be a mistake. His words are a mistake. 

Except they apparently aren’t. He wishes they were. 

Axel tries to tug him away back towards the gate, but the monsters close rank around them. It appears that the guards are finally intent on doing their jobs. It wouldn’t matter if they could leave or not. Chazz’s legs feel like jello. 

The King ends the duel in one turn, one trap is all it takes and the darkness consumes his victim. The King’s armor clacks as he sweeps across the field. Chazz watches as the monsters grovel and dip low to the ground, as he passes by.

“I have been waiting for such a long time. We are going to have so much fun together soulmate.” The words should sound comforting but Chazz can’t ignore the smile that promises pain. There is no love in those golden eyes. 


End file.
